AKØM FOBB ’05:
Putting the pedal to the mettle

By Steve Sutterer, AKØM/BB
Special to The ARS Sojourner
Aug.-Sept. ‘05

I missed Field Day this year, so have been looking forward to this event ever since. This year I biked about 1 mile to Greenhill Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This park is a great radio location, as it's one of the highest points in town, a few but reasonably tall trees, and relatively undeveloped so it draws few visitors. The only detriment is the big water tower at the south end of the park - sorry to all you Texans! Very nice view.



I was initially worried about the weather, as I awoke to thunderstorms. But, the cool front passed just to the south of us, where it just parked all afternoon. The whole time I was looking at the big thunderstorm clouds less than 50 miles away and watching closely for movement toward me, but it never happened. So I enjoyed partly sunny skies, mid-70s temps, and a light breeze which kept down the bugs. I'm not sure it could have been much better!

I used my FT-817 at 5watts, powered by an external 3AH battery pack. My antenna was an 88 foot doublet, slightly sloping with the center about 30 feet high, oriented ESE/WNW, and fed with 80 feet of Radio Shack 300 ohm twinlead through a LDG Z-11 autotuner.



I used my K1EL K-10+ keyer packaged in an Altoids tin for most of my contacts, and a Palm Paddle. I logged with GOLOG on a Palm IIIx, using the Palm Portable keyboard per the mod on NKØE's GOLOG web site. Having a keyboard instead of the graffiti input sure is nice! I modified the hotsync base to support the Palm and built an interface cable to the keyboard, to provide mechanical stability. This worked very well.



I didn't think conditions were very good, with quite a bit of QRN on 40 and 20, and lots of deep QSB on 20. With all the "bees" that were registered, I expected more activity, but maybe propagation filtered that down some. I ended up with 69 QSO's for my 3.5 hrs operation (got started late), 28 states, 3 VE provinces, 32 bee QSOs. CA and WA were my furthest QSOs.

This was the first time I have ever taken the bike out on a portable operation, and it worked pretty good. I had a small box of antenna stuff on the rear carrier, and my backpack carried the station.



A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!
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Steve Sutterer, AKØM, is a QRPer and outdoorsman living in Cedar Falls, IA.